The Pros and Cons of Breathing
by oddooddood
Summary: What if after Dean went to Hell, Sam did strike up a deal to bring him back? What would it cost? Only the end of the world.


Everything was dark, and then all of a sudden it wasn't anymore. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter, taking a few tries to finally get it to light. The space around him illuminated, revealing that he was in what appeared to be a cramped wooden box. It was getting harder to breath by the second, the air was heavy and thick, and the lit lighter was quickly burning his remaining oxygen. Quickly he pulled his legs back and kicked the top of the box, once he had created a small hole, he began pulling at the (luckily) poorly built wooden box. Ripping small bits of wood from its frame until a hole large enough to crawl out of appeared. He shoved his hand though the hole, dirt. He kept pushing his hand forward through the dirt, until he could feel the warmth of the sunlight on his skin. Fortanilty, the box was only buried less than two feet under the ground, and he was able to climb out with some ease.

He awakened confused, to say the least. He could barely remember his name, Dean Winchester. He had to keep repeating it to himself, as if he even stopped for a second he might forget.

Abruptly, everything came rushing back to him. He remembered everything. Especially the pain, the blinding pain of each claw as it dug deeply into his skin. There was no way he could be alive right now. And judging by the fallen trees the formed a perfect circle around his grave, he was right, and someone must have messed with some pretty bad mojo to bring him back. He couldn't think about that right now. He just knew he needed to get out of here.

There was no way of telling where his was, so he picked a direction and started walking. With each step he took, he felt he might fall over. He had been who knows how long without food or water, and just the mere concept of walking any further, made him woozy. But still he trudged on. Eventually he reached a run down gas station, with only two aged cars, that looked like they hadn't been moved for years, sitting in its parking lot.

He walked to the window of the store, and peered inside. As expected nobody was inside, but the store appeared to be relatively well kept, and still has electricity, the faint hum of the freezers could be heard, even outside. He wrapped his over shirt that had been tied around his waste, around his hand to serve as padding, before breaking the window, and reaching inside to unlock the door. He prayed this place didn't have security cameras.

Once inside he practically ran to the cooler, and pulled out a water chugging it. The water was cold, and felt nice on his parched throat. After guzzling the water, he started to look around the shop. There had to be something useful around here. When he walked around the counter he noticed a newspaper sat on top of it. The date read Thursday, September 18, 2008. That's impossible, he thought to himself. The date was nearly four months later than it should be. There was absolutely no way he had been in that box for four months. Perhaps the paper had been labeled wrong.

Suddenly, the television in the corner turned on. Dean reached over, and turned it off. Almost as quickly as he turned it off, it turned back on, along with the radio this time. Not missing a beat, he ran over to shelves and grabbed some generic brand of salt off the flimsy metal shelving. He stared to pour the salt on the window sill, but before he could get far, a loud ear spliting, high pitched noise, caused him to instinctually pull his hand over his ears. He fell to the ground as all of the glass in the building shattered, showering him in the sharp shards. Just as quickly as the sound started it was over. He stood up, shaking as many of the shards off his body as possible, and looked out the window, searching for some possible cause of this sound.

He didn't spy anything that could have caused the sound, but he did see something he'd missed. A phone booth sat not more than a few yard s in front of the store. This was his opportunity to contact Sam, and maybe get some answers.

Once inside the booth, he inserted a coin, and dialed his brothers number.

Instead of Sam's voice an automated message came across the speaker. "I'm sorry, but the number you are trying to reach has been disconnected."

Well, there went that idea. Dean scanned his brain trying to formulate some other number that he could call. He dialed another number. The phone ringed twice before, a familiar gruff voice answered.

"Yeah?" The voice said.

"Bobby, its me." Dean spoke over the line.

"Who's "Me"" Bobby Answered.

"Dean" And with that the phone call disconnected.

Quickly, Dean put his fingers to the dial pad, and called again.

"Who is this?" He sounded irritated, outright mad even.

"Bobby, listen to me." Dean pleaded.

"This ain't funny. Call this again, and I'll kill you." And again the call disconnected. Dean realized now that there was no point in calling again, he obviously wasn't going to get anywhere. So he went to the car that looked mostly likely to drive, and crawled into the drivers seat. He reached down under the steering wheel, and took the exposed wires, and tried his best to hot wire the car. After a few tries the cars engine revved. Dean had never been so happy to heat the purr of a car engine in his life. Finally something was going right. He took off in the direction of one of the only homes he's ever known."

He drove through the night, only stopping once to refuel, and grabbing something to eat. By the early morning, the next day, he had reached his destination. The junkyard looked identical to how he remembered it, and a faint smile formed on his lips.

He walked up to the door and knocked. He was greeted with a mixture of both shock, and anger. The person who stood on the other side of door was Bobby Singer, one of the most important people in Deans life.

"Surprise." Dean spoke only half jokingly.

"I don't-" Bobby took a step back.

"Yeah, me neither, but here I am." Dean walked into the house, un-noticing of the fact that the man he had drove hours to see, had grabbed a knife.

This felt like some sort of cruel joke on him, but he sure as hell wasn't going to let whatever was presenting itself as Dean parade around in his meat suit. He firmed his gripe on the knife, and lunged it at whatever this thing was.

Dean reacted quickly grabbing Bobby's arm, trying to discourse the knife that was headed towards his chest. "Bobby, it's me!" he shouted.

"My Ass!"

"Whoa, Whoa, Whoa! Wait!" He asserted. "Your name is Robert Steven Singer. You became a hunter after your wife got possessed. You're about the closet thing to a father that I have. Bobby, It's me."

Bobby paused for a second, and started to walk towards him. For a brief moment a wave of relive flooded over Dean. This didn't last long, as the second Dean started to let his guard down, the same knife was flying towards his face again. After a bit of a struggle Dean was able to pull the knife from Bobby's hands.

"If I was anything other than me would I be able to do this with a silver knife?" He raised the knife to his upper forearm, and pushed the blade into his skin.

"Dean?" Bobby was stunned.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you. Dean Stepped towards a much calmer Bobby, and the two men embraced. They stood there for a moment, before Bobby reached onto the cabinet behind him, and threw a good amount of Holy Water on the younger mans face. "Not a demon either.

"Sorry, you can't be to careful." Bobby shrugged.

Dean began to explain what had happened before he arrived.

"That doesn't make a lick of sense. Dean, your chest was ribbons, you're insides slop, and you'd been buried for four months. Even if you could manage to get topside again -" Bobby was cut off.

"I know, I should look like a "Thriller" video reject. Last thing I remember is being a Hell Hounds chew toy, and then lights out. Then I come to six feet under. That was it. Sam's number been disconnected." He dreaded asking the next question. "Sams not uh-"

"Oh, he's alive as far as I know." Bobby uttered.

"Good." Dean smiled, relived. "Wait- what do you mean as far as you know?

"I haven't spoken to him in months, just took off. He was dead set on it. You know these last few months haven't been easy on him or _me_. We had to bury you Dean." Dean looked down for a moment, he hadn't even thought to think how his death could have effect Bobby, or Sam. "I wanted to have you salted, and burned, but Sam wouldn't allow it. Said "You'd need a body when he got you back somehow."

Realization hit Dean like a fast moving truck. Oh, dammit Sammy, Dean thought to himself. "Oh he got me home alright. But whatever he did it was bad Mojo, You shoulda' seen the grave sight, looked like a nuke went off. Oh and there's this." Dean rolled up his sleeve revealing what looked like a burn mark in the shape of a hand on his right shoulder. Its like a demon, yanked – or road me out, must have been upholding their part of the deal."

Bobby could only stare at Dean in utter shock. "You really think he'd make a deal?"

"Its what I would have done." Dean said dryly. "I'm gonna track his phone. My money's that he's staying somewhere close to where I popped up." A few moments later Dean was on Bobby's landline, calling the cell phone company, stating that he had lost his phone, and needed the GPS turned on. Then he went to the computer, logging onto the arch mobile website. A few seconds later a map popped up revealing Sam's location. "What did I tell you, Pontiac, Illinois, less than a couple miles from where woke up. That's a hell of a coincidence, don't you think?"

And with that they were already both in Bobby's truck driving to Sam's location. Bobby had extra Gas canisters in the back of the truck, which allowed them to drive straight through with no stops. They speed-ed the entire way there, and were able to make it just as the sun started to stoop under the horizon.

The destination was a vaguely shady motel, most of the letters on the florescent sign had stopped working and read "Po-ti-c Hill-ide Mo-el, Vacancy." Dean and Bobby, opened the door to the main office.

"You fella's need a room? You're not the type we usually see around here, but hey I don't judge." The short chubby man standing at the front desk said suggestively.

Dean stared at the man for a moment, trying to think of some witty response, but his mind drew a blank. "Uh-No? You check in a guy a couple of days ago? Should been about this tall" Dean gestures a few inches above his head. "needed a haircut?"

"Yeah, I checked him in alright. Room 196." The man paused for a second and then thew up his hands. "Three of you? I guess time's are changing." The man winked.

"Um-alright. Thank you? I think." Dean replied, and stated to slip out the door.

"Come back if you need one more." And with that Dean exited and slammed the door as quickly as humanly possible. It took Bobby, and Dean almost an hour to locate Sams room, but they sure as hell weren't going back to the office to ask for direction. The room was on the second floor, and the last door on the right. Two of the numbers had faded and only the 9 remained. The others were barely legible.

Dean Knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again, and a few moments he heard rustling behind the door, and the sound of a bolt lock being undone. After that the door opened, and he stood face to face with his brother.

Sam looked different, thinner, yet still more muscular. His hair fell longer than Dean had ever seen, falling almost to his chin.

Sam stepped back, grabbing Something off the the shelf blocked by the door, a second later Dean had been covered in Holy water for the second time today. It wasn't a fun new activity that he was enjoying.

Sam looked towards Bobby.

"I already went through all that boy, It's really him." Bobby affirmed to Sam. Before anyone could say anything else Sam had already tightly clasped Dean into a hug. They stood there for a while, longer than what was probably exexptable, but they didn't care. Bobby swore that he could even feel a tear coming to his eye.

After a while they both stepped back. "So tell me what did it cost?" Dean demanded.

"What? The room? You wouldn't believe how affordable." Sam joked.

"That's not funny Sam. To bring me back." Dean spoke harshly. "What did it cost? Was it just your soul, or was it something worse?

"It wasn't a bad deal. At first nobody was trading but after some uh- " Sam needed to pick his next words carefully. "Bargaining and Persuasion, I was able to set things right."

"bargaining and persuasion? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I'm off the hook and you're on, is that it?" Dean lectured.

"It's complicated. Apparently for some reason i'm important to Hell, all they said is that I'd have to say _Yes_ to something in the future, and then something about breaking seals, and that if I backed out you'd be sent right back, except it'd be 100 times worse. I won't apologize for bringing you back, Dean." Sam said stiffly.


End file.
